We get the best sunsets without ever leaving our house in Greeley. Sitting on our back porch in the summertime, we love to watch the sun go down. It is so pretty. Here are a few pics I took tonight. It is like a painting that changes before our eyes. Click to enlarge to see it in more vivid detail.
Rose in the flower garden enjoying the display as well
And for you chicken fans….
Our new plants, that we just dug up, hauled over to our house, removed all the mulch for, and planted are…gone! I came home from lunch today to see they were almost all taken! I was so upset. Some of the plants were left though. They were mainly the plants that we had had there before or that we had just got at the store and still had the price tag hanging from them. Therefore, all signs point to the neighbor who abandoned her property or else wouldn’t a random person have taken all of them and not been so selective?
This is all that’s left!
Argh. I really don’t know what to do! She probably assumed that we just stole her plants and so she was going to steal them back. Or she thought maybe that we had something to do with her getting the ticket about the noxious weeds even though we were just as surprised.
It is so weird though. They were there this morning, then they were gone at 2pm when I stopped by home after a lunch meeting. I asked all our neighbors and they didn’t see anything. Our roommate was home but just hanging out in the basement so didn’t see anything.
What would you do? Write a letter to her? Post a note on her house saying that we received permission to take the plants because they would have otherwise been mowed down? Post a “No Trespassing” sign on our yard?
All that hard work! And she lives in a rental where she can’t really do all that gardening, so what will happen to all those plants?
We could just leave it be and forget about it, or try and fill it with more plants from our backyard and greenhouse. Or just buy some more (I don’t think we’ll take any more from that yard -let them mow it for all I care now!). It’s weird because if she had wanted the plants, she could have just dug them up from her old yard. There are still plenty of plants! But I think she was sending us a message. I kept asking Britton if he thought she would be upset and he said, “She could care less. She has moved on and that is not her house anymore.” Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think she might have been the one to turn us in to the city for our chickens as well…neighbor drama.
A couple of weeks ago we were commenting about our neighbor’s yard and how it was such a shame for all of those plants to be so neglected. You see, she has a non-traditional yard with lots of plants and flowers instead of just grass, but unfortunately she has let the house go into foreclosure and no longer lives there.
The house in question with the ‘mow-it-down’ landscaper’s truck
Then Britton and I were working in the backyard and Britton let out a gasp as he walked through the gate to the front yard and saw someone MOWING down all the beautiful irises, poppies, mums, alliums, roses, lavender and so much more. So we dropped everything we were working on and ran over to the landscaper. “Please! Don’t mow these down, or if you are going to, just let us take some plants out first!”
So he said he would hold off on mowing the front side area while we collected the plants. We got as much as we could in one trip. He saw we were still trying to get more plants when he was ready to do that side, so he said he would just leave it for a while and come back in a few days. A few days later he still hadn’t returned which was good for us, but we noticed a sign on her house that said “City Violation: Noxious Weeds -Whole Yard”. We were just amazed. No wonder people think we are crazy having chickens if having roses and irises instead of grass constitutes “noxious weeds”.
Some of the plants we saved from being mowed down
So, anyway, this transplanting from one yard to the other became quite a project. We were thinking of doing something new with the front area anyhow. We mostly spend our time in the backyard with the chickens, greenhouse and vegetable and flower gardens, but we took the hint and decided this was the push we needed to start working on it. (How can you say no to free plants!?) Here you can see some of what it took, just to take out the old stuff! (Plus you know it’s summer when the ice cream truck drives by! 🙂 )
This is the before and after. We are still hoping to fill it in with more wild flowers and other plants so there is less dirt seen but we think it looks pretty good to start!
Front area before with one of the plants and Schnoodle
Front facing the other direction after a ton of work (with Schnoodle and Kitty too!)
We have this plant called comfrey. I think it is quite pretty with little dangling purple flowers on it. Britton thinks it grows too fast and impedes the flow of water from the sprinkler, but I think it’s great! One thing that this plant also does that is unique is it brings bumble bees to our yard. Bumble bees are very different from honey bees. They are big, buzzing, fuzzy and are the classic yellow and black. I happened to be out in the yard and snapped a few pictures of it gathering supplies on the comfrey plant.
Working hard
Comfrey is actually a useful herb in herbal medicine as well as in fertilizing. The traditional name for it was knitbone as it contains an herbal ingredient allantoin. Allantoin is a cell proliferant that speeds up the natural replacement of body cells. Comfrey was once used to treat a wide variety of ailments ranging from bronchial problems, broken bones, sprains, arthritis, gastric and varicose ulcers, severe burns, acne and other skin conditions. Externally, it has many tremendous benefits as you can see in this video. However, taken internally it should be used in very limited quantities and under careful watch of an herbalist.
Used in the garden, the leaves of comfrey store all of the minerals that the plant accumulates from the soil and can then be composted back into the garden without losing nitrogen. Comfrey has all this and bees beside!